


Death of A Sparrow

by ionthesparrow



Category: Griffin McElroy's Pokémon Y Nuzlocke Challenge (Web Series), Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 12:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8666644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow
Summary: A melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon. The curtain rises.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello. This is fanfiction based on Griffin McElroy's nuzlocke run? If you don't know, all you really need to know, is that it is a Polygon youtube series of him playing one of the Pokémon games except, basically, you have to pretend death is real. There are other rules modifying how the game is played, but that's the big one. Death is real.
> 
> If you'd like to watch, [here is a link to the first video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_StruwFQWyY).
> 
> The series is ongoing. Uh, spoilers through Episode 17? I guess? Except for - you know what, never mind.
> 
> ALSO. Disclaimer: my entire experience with Pokémon is limited to this video series and having Pokémon Go on my phone for a couple months before I got bored. So if I sound like I don't know Pokémon, it's probably because I don't know Pokémon.

* * *

 

_“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”_

 

 

1\. 

He walks with a tame fox by his side, headed straight into deep brush, as though the growing darkness brought on by limbs spreading overhead doesn’t bother him at all. 

You hear him before you see him, and you see him long before he sees you. There is something fascinating in the behavior of person who does not know they are being watched, and this is what you are caught by – not by the efforts of some tame fox. Not by the magic of a ball. 

He kneels in front of you, face inches from a beak sharp enough and quick enough to put out his eyes before he could even think of pulling back. 

His eyes are bright. “This is a new hat,” he says. He touches the brim of the red cap on his head. “Do you like it?” 

Dark things curl in the shadows all around you, but he is bright. He rests his hands on his knees and watches you. “What should I name you?” he asks. “What’s a fun name to give a bird?” 

To name a thing before you know it, and to think that gives you ownership over it – that is an act of ignorance. 

But there is nothing in his voice but wonder, and his hands are open. 

You look at the fox with new eyes. The pull in your chest says the decision has already been made. You will give your tameness, with the full knowledge that will live to regret it, because to give a name to the unknown is an act of ignorance, but to answer to that name – that is an act of love. 

 

 

He sees you kill for the first time in that forest. And he laughs. He is charmed by the waving, dancing motions of the monster you face. He coos. He sees a caterpillar. 

You see a snake who has been given poison to cover the rest of its body, to go with the poison that coats its teeth. 

It makes a last death rattle under your talons, and the boy seems surprised at your strength. He looks down from on high, and you realize he sees you as something small. As though he has not thought at all about what it takes to survive in a forest full of monsters as a little, brown bird. 

And you realize, it is not that he is unbothered by the darkness, but that he cannot see it at all. 

 

 

2\. 

He talks to you, but when you say, “Through those doors, are people who will hurt us. People who will try to take me from you” – he laughs. 

He talks about the sound of your voice, turns to pose for you, fingers holding out the hem of his t-shirt for you to see. “Do you like this look? I think it’s good for spring.” 

He says, with clear eyes and a lifted face, “I want to be great.” As if greatness were not built by breaking others, not a thing marked out with scorched earth and spilled blood. 

“I want to be the greatest that ever was.” 

You say, “Greatness is defined by striving. And what is greatness without sacrifice?” And those words come back to you when you bounce hard off an iron shell. You hold that tattered wing close to your chest, lift the parts of your body that will respond to you, and end the thing across from you before it can end you. 

He smiles. He says, “I want to be great,” while knowing nothing, seeing nothing. 

And you want it for him. 

 

 

3\. 

You will need to grow. Your experience changes you. You claim your weapons as the spoils of survival, the reward of making it this far. 

When he sees you, he calls you beautiful. 

 

 

4.

The first death is red blood on white limbs and the shafts of broken feathers caught between canine teeth. In life, he hovered with wings outstretched, but in death his form is crumpled, flesh folded and torn easily as paper. 

The boy watches him fall, cries out in shock. You see pain on his face, and quick, quick anger. “Get in there,” he says. “ _Get him_.” 

And you do. You launch into battle, with not a single second wasted on fear or question. There is no time for that. There is no time for anything but your claws outstretched. 

It will not be until much, much later that you realize he witnessed a death, and hesitated not a single second before he threw you in too. 

 

 

5\. 

When you recover and pull through, he is delighted. He calls you a devastator, a weapon. He bedecks himself and he basks in the mirror. But he always looks away quickly. He never studies the image long. 

He claims, on occasion, to see ghosts, and you see him at night, you hear the way he cries out in his sleep, like a thing haunted. 

 

 

6\. 

The bodies pile in your shared wake. 

Following the sink crunch of a shattered shell and light fading from once-sharp eyes, he sends you in, for the first time with a look of uncertainty. For the first time like he’s worried you won’t return. 

 

 

7\. 

You think he has learned about the finality of things. That when you are scraped open, it is your real heart showing, that the blood and the muscle and the gristle are all you have and all you will ever have to offer. That when they are gone, they are gone. 

You think he understands, but when he sees a white bird he makes up a story to dismiss the finality of death. You could hate him. You cannot understand – 

 

 

8\. 

– how he can ignore death when the bodies are laid out slick and identical side by side, all in a row. You wonder if he believes his own story. If his hesitations, if the flickers of darkness in the corner of his eye mean anything. 

 

 

9\. 

You will have to carry the burden of truth for both of you, and you will need strength and merciless judgment, and to be sliced free of your fear. You have to become what you were created for, do what you were shaped to do. You change yourself – for both of you. You are not bedecked or adorned with sharpness now, you _are_ the razor. You do not push the air in front of you, you are yourself the battering ram. The striking blow. The falling thunderbolt. 

 

 

10\. 

He sees but he cannot focus. His eyes are caught on trappings. 

 

 

11, 12, 13. 

But for you, height gives a vantage. From above, the layout is crystal clear. You are far enough, and brutal enough that nothing touches you, and nothing hurts. 

 

 

14, 15, 16. 

But every fight is a game of chance, for every missed blow, a future one waits to land. When you are knocked from the sky and brutalized by the earth, he asks why he didn’t see before. He asks how could he have not aided you earlier. The whole time unblinking, and the whole time blind. 

 

 

17\. 

There is an end. The whole point is that there is an end. There is a bridge that he will cross, and you will not. You lived because he called you into being and because you answered him. 

You died because he could not grasp that your death was possible. 

The whole point was that your death was possible. But it was an idea too slippery to hold onto. The mind shies away. The mind protects only itself. 

He has moved on. He has already crossed. 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Summary is the opening line of _Death of a Salesman_ and the epigraph is from _The Art of War_
> 
> Listen, I know. _I know_. But you can click off this link, I have to live with me 24/7.


End file.
